Find your potential
Hundreds of thousands of individuals looking to improve their career path have had their lives transformed by the insights the Birkman tool provides.*
Looking at life talks with Sarah Mason -a Senior Consultant for Birkman, about the benefits of using the Birkman online personal development tool to explore your motivations, interests, hidden needs and stress behaviours.
Sarah is a big believer in planning for your career. Through her work with Birkman she supports lots of people in their 20s and 30s who are either starting a career, looking for a change of job, or simply want to be more effective in their work.
Choose a job that suits you down to the ground
If you're job hunting, it's often easy to feel desperate, and just apply for whatever job you can get. But you're investing a huge amount of time into your work. The Birkman gives you the tools you need to choose a company that's more in line with your motivations.
For example, you might be an accountant, ready to work in a high powered banking situation, but having examined your motivations and preferences, you might feel more fulfilled in an accounting role in a 'people focused' organisation such as social services or a charity.
Free to be you
At this stage of life, you probably have a good idea of what you enjoy. The Birkman report is really useful for confirming things you suspected might be true, and affirming your strengths. But it's sure to tell you some things you don't know, too! This opens out new possibilities, maybe introducing you to potential work choices that you might not have considered.
A framework for discussion
The Birkman Express gives you a framework for discussing what's important. Obviously when you're choosing a career, the area of work is the first thing you think about. You might never have considered the factor of organisational culture (e.g. high flying / charitable / social / entrepreneurial), and how it might suit your personality. If you're about to enter a high power environment, for example, we can explore the issues you're likely to face and give you tools to deal with them.
Wherever you're at
Thinking more widely about your options could enable you to find a career you might never have considered. Conversely, if you don't know where to start, your results could help you to eliminate jobs that you are unsuited to you, narrowing the search and helping you to find direction.
It helps you to understand yourself better, what you need to energise you and the things that will likely drain you. It also shines light on your work 'personality', what makes you unique from others, as well as offering useful insights into how you can best relate to other different work 'personalities'.
The Birkman Express has a long shelf life - it remains valid right through your working life, giving you insights to help you face challenging situations as they arise.
Your view
Luke Hodge is 31 and runs his own IT business. Earlier this year he took part in our Birkman workshop 'What gets you out of bed in the morning?'. He told us:
"The end of university is a very weird time, when you leave the standard routes of life, and all of a sudden you're pushed out into real world. And it doesn't stop there. I think there's a new area around the mid-late twenties when people start questioning what they want out of life and where they want to go. Many people ask themselves: am I in the right career? Am I heading the right way? Is it time for a change?
I think the Birkman tool is really useful at this point. I think it gives people more confidence in their own lives. It helps them to stand on their own two feet. It sparks ideas, affirms your strengths and points you in the right direction."
What is it?
* The Birkman Express is an affordable online personal development tool, which provides you with a personalised guide to your work and work relationships. Thanks to the strong relationship between our parent organisation- Care for the Family- and Birkman International, we are now able to offer you the Express version of the Birkman at a fraction of the cost of the full version (£24.99 instead of several hundred pounds). Find out more here.
Written by Becky Williams. Posted on 2nd June.
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